It took a couple of Michio Kaku videos on youtube, a full night's rest, ranting to MS, JM, JK, SS, NP and other women, breakfast and a couple of ciggy breaks to finally calm down after watching "The Labyrinth of the Butterfly" last night. I was prepared for it because The Turtle told me about two years ago that the play (and the book that it was based on) totally dissed Michio Kaku.

Now, if you have any clue about me (or had at least traveled with me twice, or asked me about my favourite things in life), you would know that I would lose an arm to be Michio Kaku. And that I absolutely love his work.  I owe this man for bringing physics back to me, who has made me feel less of a Failed Physicist-Wannabe. This man is one of a handful of theoretical physicists who have de-mystified phsyics and quantum mechanics for regular human beings. He is one of the few scientists who actually take a stand against nuclear weapons and war. He is one of the even fewer physicists who write about women physicists and the lack of such women in the world of physics. This is a man who may not necessarily be gender-sensitive or feminist, but is not a sexist.

This is how I've always perceived Michio Kaku, so I was absolutely gutted when last night's play painted him as a sexist loser who designed "Molly" the highly-sexualised female robot straight out of sexist geek fantasy. First things first, Kaku is a theoretical physicist. His life's work is the M-Theory (one of the major strands of the Theory of Everything, whom he also calls "The Mother of All Theories"). He is not an applied physics person. I can't imagine him building a robot at all. I've heard about photos of him and the robot he invented, Molly, who was a mechanical Angelina Jolie of sorts. I have never seen that photo of Molly.

Secondly, here's a clarification of how Kaku wrote about Molly the robot: 2020 Vision (the 4th article on the page). I have to rely on the internet for actual quotes at the moment, I don't have my bookshelf with me (I haven't had it in over a month, in fact). I have read Kaku writing about Molly before, but she had never struck me as a highly-sexualised mechanic representation of the dirtiest male fantasies (of a subservient woman with big tits). It's been a while since I revisited "Visions", Kaku's book around the future of science and tech where he talks about Molly, but I've always thought that Molly was kind of like the voice in your head that reminds you of things and makes your life easier and safer. Not necessarily the sex-bot that was acted out in last night's play. I think our own discomfort at male girl-robot fantasies were assigned to last night's Molly, which resulted in Kaku being totally villified. Which is unfair.

Lastly, I've been thinking about last night's Molly and some of the points that were raised about a year ago when I was doing a gender evaluation training for a software localisation project.

So Nepal, 2007. We were talking about the fact that in text-to-speech software (which was particularly useful for illiterate communities), the male voice was much easier to use. It has to do with the differences in the decibel and frequency ranges of women's and men's voices. According to the geeks, in Asia, we did not have the skills and capacity to work with a female voice in text-to-speech software (the skills are available in the US, they said). This results in the absence of (literally) female voices in software that is localised in Asia.

We, the gender advocates in that meeting, said that it was important for women users (especially those who were dealing with their own fears of tech) to be able to hear voices in their software that they can relate to. Simply put, there must be a way to have female voices in the localised text-to-speech software.

So back to Cape Town 2008. If the premise is that having female voices in technology is empowering to women, why then do we have a problem with female-looking /-sounding robots? Wouldn't such an entity be empowering to women as well? Wouldn't such a creature be something that we can relate to as women (as opposed to a male robot)?

Or is the problem we have with Molly the fact that she was presented as a thing that did household work? That she had big boobs last night? That she was highly-sexualised?

Or is the problem because Michio Kaku is male and he was represented as having created her? Is this a problem even if nothing of Kaku's work point to his sexism?

Would Molly and Michio have been saved from ridicule and mockery if they had switched sexes?

Tags: activist stuff, awid08, awid2008, feminist rambling, geekery, pop culture, reviews of everything, tripping away, women and tech
coordinates: cape town
state of mind: grumpy
background noise: people buzzing at the FTX Hub

Grabbed off pa3k12 over at multiply because I'm killing time and self-involved.

1. Do you like cheese?
Yes. All sorts but the gorgonzola the best.

2. Are you a chain smoker?
Trying not to be -- well, has not been for the last three weeks.

3. Your favorite song?
Toss up between "Paint It Black" by The Rolling Stones and "Life on Mars" by David Bowie.

4. Do you get nervous before doctor appointments?
Yes. Because the past year has only brought more medical complications.

5. What do you think of hotdogs?
Indifferent towards them unless they're smothered in chili.

6. Favorite Christmas song?
I don't like Christmas songs.

7. What do you prefer to drink in the morning?
Tea.

8. Can you do push ups?
I'd like to think so, yes.

9. Favorite superhero?
Gosh. To me, that's just like asking a parent who their favourite kid is (or asking Imelda Marcos what her favourite pair of shoes is)... So, toss up among: Batman, Domino, Buffy, Molly from Neuromancer, The Phoenix, Spider-man, Daredevil, Jenny Sparks, Jack Hawksmoor, Jenny Quantum, Doctor Manhattan, Hellboy... I could go on all day.

10.Secret weapon to get the opposite sex?
Pay them? I don't know these things!!!

11. Whats one trait you hate about yourself?
The lack of control and the need to have it.

12. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment
I hope the Internet here doesn't flake out.
It's cold.
The sage and pumpkin ravioli looks yummy.

13. Name 3 things you bought yesterday?
Breakfast. A bottle of water. The services of a porter at the train station.

14.Name 3 drinks you regularly drink?
Black tea with milk. Water. And water.

15. Favorite places?
My room. Anywhere where Lucia is. Anywhere where I can have internet access and smoke. The internet. Anywhere where I can play pool and smoke.

16. What color of shirt are you wearing?
Grey.

17. Can you whistle?
Yes.

18. Favorite color/s?
Anything but brown and yellow.

19. Would you like to be a pirate?
No, I like my hygienic practices, thank you very much.

20.  What songs do you sing in the shower?
The cheesy ones.

21. Favorite girl's name?
Emily

22.  Favorite boy's name?
Joaquin

23.  What's in your pocket right now?
Cigs, lighter, two silver rings, some sand from the beach.

24. Last thing that made you laugh?
See last post.

25. Worst injury you've ever had?
Does a ripped out brow ring count?

26. Do you love where you live?
Generally, yes.

27.How many computers do you have in your house?
One. Mine.

28.Does someone have a crush on you?
I should hope so.

29.What is your favorite bar?
Bar of soap? Or anywhere with a pool table that allows smoking.

30.What is your favorite candy?
Toffee mints.

31.What were you doing 12 AM last night?
Dreaming about my niece telling me that apartheid was a good thing and how horrified I was.

32.What is the first thing you thought of when u woke up?
Where the heck am I?

Tagging: tin, marby, leng, kris, gen, paolo m, big boy... Everyone!

Tags: pointless posts, pop culture
coordinates: jenny's house, muizenberg
state of mind: calm
background noise: dinner being prepared

Tali, the 6-year-old I was hanging out with in Johannesburg taught me this Barney song:
"I hate you, you
Let's go out and kill Barney,
With a baseball bat and a 4 x 4,
No more purple dinosaur."

(sung to the tune of that irritating Barney song)

This is possibly one of the most disturbing songs I've learned from a child. And that's saying plenty because I know a lot of special (read: weird, highly-intelligent, funny) kids.

Tags: pointless posts, pop culture, tripping away
coordinates: kalk bay, cape town
state of mind: sleepy
background noise: kalk bay sounds

Tagged by maragtas.

1. What worries you?
      Lately, everything. But mostly the phone ringing.

2. Are you confused as to what lies ahead?
      You mean, there's more? Fuck.

3.  Is there anything that made you unhappy recently?
      The better question is, what has not made me unhappy recently.

4. What did you last cry over?
    The crapiness of the latest Bleach episodes.

5. Have you ever dated someone?
    That's all I've seemed to do lately.

6. Which is more blessed: loving someone or being loved by someone?
    Neither. Loving the fact that you're alone is best.

7. If the person you like doesn't accept you, would you continue to wait for them to change their feelings?
    No. Ano sya sineswerte?

8. If the person you like is secretly attached, what would you do?
    "Wishing and hoping and praying..." Or however that song goes.

9.  What do you want most in life?
      Right now, a bakery in Batanes.

10. What's the most important thing you look for in a significant other?
       Funny.

11. Have you ever had your heart broken?
       Did the Grand Hitad ever exist?

12.  Would you rather be single and rich or married and poor?
       Single and rich. Anyone who chooses the latter is an idiot.

13.  Do you like someone right now?
       Trying very hard not to.

14. Do they like you too?
       I'd pay good money to know the answer to that... No wait! I'm trying not to like anyone... so I don't care!

15. If you fall in love with two persons simultaneously, who would you pick?
       The taller one.

16. What type of friends do you like?
       The ones I have now, thank you very much.

17. If you played a prank on someone, and she/he fell for the trick, what would you do?
       Document it and gloat for life.

18.  If you were betrayed by someone, what would you say to that person?
        Humanda ka sa akin.

19. If the person tagging you likes/loves you, what will you do/say?
      Awww. Lagot ka kay Marby!

20. What do you think of the person who tagged you?
      One of the funniest, funnest people in the world. One of the weirdest, too. Peace, pao!

Tagging: jhybeturtle , binsoup , fairlycloudy on LJ. Tagging: Tin, Leng, Dang, Patrick on Multiply.

Tags: demented doses, life in manila, pointless posts, pop culture
coordinates: dining table, my place
state of mind: anxious
background noise: lucia's conversations

One of the things I am very sure that I learned from Velma was how to matte lipstick. I was about 9 years old, and matte lipsticks were not so readily available then -- especially because the 1980's was all about glossy lips.

It's simple, she said. First, you apply lip balm, then you put on a thick layer of regular lipstick (in that instance, she was using some fire engine red lipstick). Then you take a sheet of tissue paper and blot your lips on it by putting the tissue in between your lips. Then you dust some powder on your lips. Then apply the lipstick again and blot your lips one more time.
This trick was designed to not only create a matte lip but to make sure that your lipstick stays on, she said.

And then she made me do as she instructed. I had no idea why she was teaching me all this, and I really would have preferred to mix lipstick and powder on a petri-dish in my makeshift "Lab" to put the concoction under my microscope than to see how a matte lip would look on me. And I think she saw that look on my face that told her that I thought nothing more of her than some ex-debutante / beauty queen / cheerleader type. So she put me in my place by telling me that I needed to learn how to matte my lips because my lips were too big to go glossy, and that I would be grateful for the knowledge she was giving me when I grew up.

Who could argue with that, right? So I ignored the jibe about the size of my lips and applied my first matte lip.

I have often wondered in the decades following that incident what made her get up from her bed and lead (read: command) me to her dresser for an impromptu make-up session. It's not like I was some girly-girl who would have bugged her for such Beauty Wisdom. Or maybe it was because I wasn't a girly-girl so she probably reckoned that she should volunteer the wisdom because I was too busy dreaming of white lab coats and robots to ask her -- or to even know the value of such questions.

Or perhaps it was simply unacceptable to her that one of her daughters would go on existing without knowing how to properly create a matte lip. That's a very Velma thing to think.

Velma may have forced her make-up and beauty tips on me at a young age. But she was the one who also bought me a toy Gatling Gun, a Spider-man arm and Swiss Army knives. She may have tried to raise me as the perfect corporate wife but she also never stopped me from taking Judo lessons. She may have stopped talking to me for a week after I came home with my first tattoo, but she was also the one who proudly brandished my daggered arm to her friends at work.

And I do think that all my contradictions, the inconsistencies that make me unique, I got that from her. Because I do know how to create a matte lip but I also know how to tell a Gatling Gun apart from a Hauser. Because she allowed me to learn both. To be both.

It's Mother's Day today. One of the few days in a year where I allow myself to miss her. So today, I will wallow in my memories of Velma. That's my way of celebrating today with her.

Tags: number 42 theories, pop culture, velma-ism

Tagged by maragtas.

My current desktop:



A couch in Singapore.

Tagging: jhybeturtle, fairlycloudy eclair and binsoup :-)

Tags: geekery, pointless posts, pop culture
coordinates: on a couch in Singapore
state of mind: awake
background noise: tv sounds

I'm procrastinating again. I have a few documents that need some work before I head out to hang out with friends in Malaysia next week. But I'm kinda stuck. So I checked the blog, which I haven't seen in over three weeks. And then I see this from angelicsmile:

Thank you for your opinion. If you read the stories provided by the Filipinas around the world, you will see the Filipina activist, the Filipina mail order bride, the Filipina working against domestic violence, the Filipina daughter, the foreigner hurt by his Filipina girlfriend, the Filipina mom, the Filipina daughter and so much more. We show hundreds of stories both positive and negative.

FilipinaImages.com is a collaborative effort of all the bloggers who believe that the The Filipina of the Future deserves a more empowered, diverse image online. Multiple, complex, and whole. " We are not out to change the Filipina perception but to balance the search engine results of Filipina websites. It's that simple.

I hope you take the time to read their stories.

Which is pretty cool. I generally blog for myself, and I don't really expect anyone other than my friends to comment. So receiving a stranger's comment, and a dissenting one at that, is good.

And the comment is fair enough.

I have to admit, when I wrote the The Filipina Paragon (Part 1), I was knee-jerk-reacting to a site that seemed to be trying so hard to improve the Filipina image -- with images that make me cringe. So I went back to the Filipina Images site to give it another go.

One of the things that are currently featured on the site were the WikiPilipinas Filipina Stories, a contest of one-shot blog entries on the modern Filipina. So I went to the winners of this contest as a starting point. Let it not be said that I am not willing to have my mind changed (ADHD kind of dictates that I do that at least once every thirty minutes, anyway). So here we go:

The winning entry was titled, The Filipina Doctor: Coming Full Circle, which expounds on the evolution of the Filipina healer from the pre-colonial babaylan to the Western doctor that she is now. It nods to ground-breaking Filipinas in the medical field. And it was a nice trip down the history of women in the medical field.

The entry the placed second was called, The Evolving Beauty of the Modern Filipina. The metaphor the blogger used was that of beauty products -- how beauty products have evolved from sabila to an entire fruit cocktail of products, and how that evolution was very much like that of  The Filipina (the modern Filipina is as well-developed as the current beauty products out in the market)... And the blogger also compared his effort to define the Filipina to a reader analysing a book., failing to realise that a woman is not the freakin' book, she's the freakin' author. Not objects or subjects, but creators of that so-called evolution... And don't get me started on how the history of the modern woman is compared to the history of beauty products... How the heck did that entry get second place?

The third place entry, the  Cyber Feminisation of Poverty: Mail Order Brides and the Image of the Filipina, should have won. The title was not a faked intellectual one. It actually cohesively looks at how the Internet has exacerbated the Mail Order Bride Dilemma (it sites sources and all that). It was well-written and the fact that the blogger didn't go all "We're Filipinas, we're so awesome" was pretty cool. It was the most intelligent one out of all of them.  My only problem with it was that the blogger posted pictures of women from mail order bride sites. What about their privacy, eh?

All in all, I was pretty pleased that the comment from angelicsmile prompted me to go back and read those blog entries.

But here's the thing. The objective of the Filipina Images site is to revamp the image of  The Filipina  from an exoticised  Mail Order Bride to that of one that is empowered and  not-a-hoe.  Good for them! But I still have an issue with who the subject of all of this is: Filipina Mail-Order Brides; Filipinas who go to these dating sites so they can bag a foreigner.

To me, it reeks of self-righteousness.
Let's all change the image of the Filipina into something more like us because we have careers and families and jobs and empowerment. Let's not let those Mail Order Brides ruin our image.

The whole thing speaks to a foreign audience.

Look! Filipinas are more than Mail Order Brides, we are empowered! Please change your minds about us!

I can't help but hear that underneath the pretty words.

I can't help but think that what this is doing is further alienating those women who think the Mail Order Bride thing is the only way out of their miserable lives. Further making them into objects of pity / scorn / analysis as we middle-class, empowered few sit in front of our machines and try to tell the world that we are not them.

_____

I'm not done. When I have free time, I will go back to that site and read some more.

But for now it's back to those concept briefs.

Tags: feminist rambling, life in manila, pop culture, women and tech
coordinates: at home
state of mind: blah
background noise: aircon humming

I seem to be on a roll here.

I blame being stuck in the middle of nowhere, in a place with no pool table. I blame running out of Bleach episodes to watch. I blame the fact that the internet is the only entertainment and distraction right now. I blame the low yellow lights at night here that don't allow me to go back to Briane Green and Fydor Dostoevsky...

Anyway.

I stumbled upon this online community and campaign: Filipina Images.

I don't know. I don't know... On one hand, I'm glad such a thing exists. I'm glad that these women have banded together to combat negative images of Filipinas online. So good on them for doing that...

But then I saw how they defined 'Filipina' and nearly hurled:

Tags: feminist rambling, pop culture, women and tech
coordinates: Sonya's Garden
state of mind: sleepy
background noise: people talking and wind chimes

I had this done on 1 March 2008. Designed by Pa3k. Inked by Jake the Man.

So 11 tattoos to date. And counting.

Tags: pointless posts, pop culture
state of mind: okay
background noise: people talking about gender issues

Malu Fernandez does it again.

Sometime in June 2007, she wrote an article on the magazine People Asia called, "From Boracay to Greece". The article was about her trip to Greece. As if the article's tacky name-dropping and brand-whoring was not obnoxious enough, the silly woman proceeds to bash Overseas Filipino Workers in the more below-the-belt way. She talks about hating being mistaken for a maid. She talks about how bad it was to be in economy class because her authentic expensive perfume was being overpowered by the cheap ones that the OFWs were wearing. She wrote that she wanted to slash her wrists because she was trapped in economy class with the OFWs.

It was elitism at its worst. At its tacky, cringing I-can't-believe-all-the-money-you-claim-to-have-didn't-buy-you-some-actual-class worst.

Needless to say, the OFW community (and they are a force to be reckoned with, believe me you) did not let her get away with it. By August 2007, the poor, stupid woman had been lambasted for everything -- from her elitism to her looks. The outrage from the OFW community was so strong that she was forced to write a public apology and quit her job.

You'd think she would have learned her lesson by now.

Oh well. You can train an old dog new tricks, so they say. I say, no amount of money in the world can buy a stupid person a brain.

This time, she's gunning after bloggers. In her recent article in the Manila Standard, "The Problem with Blogging...", she applies her elitist standards to blogging. She basically says that bloggers (the regular ones, not the ones who are popular enough to feed themselves through their blogs) are slackers and losers who do not understand the 'code of ethics that govern freedom of speech'. 

It's pretty hilarious to read someone who uses her mighty journalist pen simply to show everyone how famous and rich she is talk about journalism ethics. This is a 'journalist' who talks of nothing else but herself -- her fabulous life, her super sosyal friends, her high fashion items, and just how wonderfully elite she is.  It's extra funny that she attacks a medium that allows regular people (who don't have newspaper columns or the connections to have one) to be as self-centred as she is.

She talks about how anonymity affords bloggers freedom from accountability -- which is true enough. But tell that to the bloggers in Egypt and Malaysia who have been arrested by their own governments because of their blogs.

(Yeah, and my Inner Bitch reckons that  all that talk about 'code of ethics' really is just about  Anonymous Blogger Envy. I bet she wished she was anonymous when the OFWs wrote letters and petitions against her and campaigned to boycott her clothing brand, Tubby.)

And then, she goes much, much further than that. In that recent article, she goes on to say that blogging reflects the Filipino culture of back-stabbing. She tries to be smart by connecting that attitude to Spanish colonisation, which she critcises. But then she turns around and attacks someone for looking like an Indio*  -- in the same freaking paragraph!

Then she shifts gears and rants against anyone involved in ousting the current Philippine President. She compares that particular movement to someone who bought a green Hermes bag and wished they got the black on instead.

And then she ends with anonymous blogging again (which really proves my Anonymous Blogger Envy Theory). She ends, of course, with herself and how great she is that she's the kind of person who refuses to start World War 3 (man, Global Warming, religious fundamentalism and conservative politics will start WW3, not someone whose only talent in life is constructing grammatically-correct sentences. Talk about thinking highly of one's self), and that she would rather be in-your-face when she's being brutal.

My question really is: Why is someone like that being paid to actually publish her thoughts?

I'm all for freedom of speech but does she really need to get paid to exercise hers?

________

Indio is the derogatory term used by the Spanish colonisers for the non-caucasian people in the country. It's a racist term to the Nth degree.

Tags: demented doses, geekery, life in manila, pop culture
coordinates: somewhere in the Philippines
state of mind: bitchy
background noise: Olga skypeing in Spanish